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Why to measure progress of a digi leap?

Are you working in an organization that is undergoing digital transformation? How do you ensure the success of this digi leap? According to many CIOs, the measurement of success in digital initiatives remains to be the biggest challenge among organizations. Without standard measurement and visibility, organizations have no way of knowing whether if they are succeeding in digital transformation.

The growing need to connect business design and current operations

With organizations driving digital business transformation, there is an increased need for the redesign of processes, implementation of changes, and coordination of multiple interdependences. In order to track the change implementation and customer experience, the practice of operative indicators is necessary. Operative indicators are data-driven, as they are derived from the event data of information systems. The alignment between business design and current operations is required to gain visibility and avoid the risk of failure growing in rapidly changing digital business.

What issues hinder your progress of a successful digital transformation?

There can be many reasons why digital transformations fail. Issues related to driving digital changes that transform an enterprise are divided into four main categories of leadership, strategy, operations, and culture:

- Leadership: Lack of consensus on what digital transformation means among departments of various functions; lack of CEO's support in uniting IT and business; lack of digital talent and continuity of leadership in digital transformation due to frequent turnover

- Strategy: Lack of focus due to premature scaling; lack of alignment between digital transformation strategy and financial goals; difficulty in balancing between back-end infrastructure and customer innovation

- Operations: Lack of acceleration in realizing the return on investment of digital initiatives thus resulting in a lack of budget or overbudget; overlooking the importance in integrating new and old technologies as well as to reinvent customer value proposition

- Culture: Resistance to change among employees

Taking these issues as a basis for improvement, you can rethink your digital transformation with the following digital KPI best practices.

How to measure progress of a digi leap?

Your keys to measuring digital transformation success:

- Collaboration among top leadership to align digital transformation goals with current operations of different functions

- Mapping out the digital journey, expected outcomes, and setting KPIs and goals

- Measuring the performance of the digital journey and the created business value

- Aligning KPIs with expected business outcomes

- Determining the ideal balance point for customers and employees regarding digitalization

Even though there are no silver bullets for digital business success, KPIs can help gain visibility, track performance, and align goals among ICT and non-ICT executives. Not only do you get to understand what the business focus is and where your business revenue comes from, you can measure improvement and business outcomes of existing business models, as well as work with your non-ICT executives to support digitalization.

Measuring progress of a digi leap using business operating system

The top 10 strategic technology trends for 2018 range from intelligent, digital, to mesh. Among the top trends, the concept of digital twins refers to a digital representation of a real-world entity or system. With the creation of a digital twin, EA leaders have more guidance on digital transformation. Within the digital twin organization, business operating system consists of technology components that serve as the GPS navigation to help organizations arrive at their desired destination.

Are you interested in the details of how to measure progress of a digi leap in practice? Check out our webinar below where you will learn how to build your business operating system step-by-step to navigate your organization to digital transformation success.